


can we even call this a handshake (because i'm not letting go)

by pseudoanalytics



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Drift Side Effects, Getting Together, Ghost Drifting, Lots of drifting, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), The Drift (Pacific Rim), Withdrawal, gratuitous allusions to entry-level science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 19:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14219805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudoanalytics/pseuds/pseudoanalytics
Summary: "Drift withdrawals are real, and they're very deadly. If we want to fully weaken the Precursors, Newt will have to be slowly weaned off drifting altogether."“Sounds good,” Ranger Pentecost says after Secretary General Mori has explained the concept. “The problem is finding someone he's compatible with so we don't just fry his brain further.”Hermann doesn't like the way everyone immediately looks at him.





	can we even call this a handshake (because i'm not letting go)

**Author's Note:**

> i know we're all writing fix-it fics, but if i didn't get this out of my head i was going to explode

Hermann holds out the plastic frames and slips them onto Newt’s nose. He’s careful to tuck the arms behind his ears, and he avoids touching the lenses. 

“Heh. Thanks,” Newt cracks out with none of his trademark pep and energy in his voice. 

Hermann nods and doesn't respond. 

“Alright,” says Ranger Pentecost. “Let’s move him out of here.”

The team of rangers hefts Newt up from where he's seated on the floor, arms and legs restrained. They drop him on a gurney and roll it toward Hermann’s lab. Newt’s fingers drum anxiously on his upper arms, and his legs twitch and shudder sporadically. 

Hermann watches them closely, afraid to blink.

He’s doing better. Newt, that is. Cut off from Alice and without his daily “pick-me-up,” the Precursors’ hold over his mind grew weaker and weaker. They're still there, Hermann knows, but they have nowhere near the same control. 

If Hermann had his way, he'd take Newt away from all the chaos left in the wake of the second apocalypse. They'd move and recover somewhere far from here. Maybe Oakland. Or San Francisco. 

But it’s not up to Hermann, and with Secretary General Mori and Ranger Pentecost determined to take the fight to the Precursors directly, Newt doesn't have time to heal mentally. If they're going to really enter the breach themselves, the PPDC will need the very best of the K-Science division up and running once more. 

And thus came Mako’s idea. 

Drift withdrawals were very, very real and very, very deadly. Pilots could slip into depression and wither away, their minds constantly elsewhere. In theory, the solution was close confinement with one’s drift partner, _without_ drifting. Most addicts needed to relearn how to make genuine human connections without linking brains. The process then slowly branched out to seeing other people, and eventually, in best case scenarios, reintroduction to the general public. 

In theory. 

The sad truth was that they had always been at war, and few to no pilots retired without their partner’s death first. 

And of course, with no partner, no confined rehabilitation. 

Mako and Raleigh had gone through it together after the breach was first closed. They'd come out stronger and healthier, one of only seven positive cases. The current medical explanation was that Raleigh had a special affinity for avoiding drift withdrawal. He'd managed to escape after Yancy had died too. 

Mako’s idea added an additional step to the process. Newt needed to learn to drift with a _human_ before he could be fully weaned off neural handshakes altogether. 

“Sounds good,” Ranger Pentecost had said after Mako explained the concept and the drift neurologists had confirmed it as medically sound. “The problem is finding someone compatible so we don't just fry his brain further.”

Hermann hadn't liked the way everyone’s heads had swung toward him. 

He'd agreed, of course. How could he _not._ It was Newt after all. 

He'd signed all the paperwork, consented to the intense mental and physical examinations, and helped Precursor-proof his PPDC laboratory. 

“Are you sure you're okay with this, Dr. Gottlieb?” Mako asks him firmly. 

Hermann swallows audibly. “Yes,” he says, and prays he isn't making the wrong decision. 

She looks at him in a way that feels like a drift. It’s so intense, Hermann wouldn't be surprised if she could see directly into his mind. Whatever she finds, it seems to satisfy her. “We’ll be watching,” she adds. 

Hermann squares his shoulders and walks into his lab before anyone else can. He hardly recognizes it. It’s outfitted more like a large, secure living space now, without so much as a hint that he'd once done scientific research and development inside. 

The rangers—teens really, but they've saved the world and deserve everyone’s respect—roll Newt inside as well. They drop him on one of the beds and cautiously unlock his restraints.

Newt’s limbs drop limply, and his glasses go crooked where they're mashed into the pillow. The only sign he's still conscious is the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the twitch his ankles can’t seem to stifle. 

Hermann can’t help but think he's got either the longest or the shortest month of his life ahead of him. Will it go slowly with nothing but a catatonic Newt for company, or will it be nowhere near enough time for Newt to heal and get back to work effectively?

Ranger Pentecost gives Hermann's elbow a quick tap for support, and the new teen, Ranger Namani, grants him a weak smile. 

Then the group all backs out and the lab doors shut. The windows tint and the artificial lights brighten to compensate. 

One month begins. Now. 

The major issue with all this, Hermann knows, is the affection. He's never been a touchy-feely kind of person, until drifting with Newt. Now it pulls at him, tugging him into other people’s gravitational space until he snaps out of it and realizes no, Dr. Hermann Gottlieb never _used_ to lean over interns’ shoulders to see what they were working on. 

The therapist he's been training with for a week now has emphasized the importance of human touch in drift rehabilitation, so Hermann sits on the bed by Newt’s tapping feet and awkwardly hovers his hand over a shaking calf. He's been sitting there for far longer than necessary when he finally works up the nerve to set it down. 

Newt stills instantly, which is, as always, the first sign that something is wrong. 

Hermann always can tell when Newt becomes _Newton_ by watching the manic energy drain from his body, replaced with an unsettling calm. 

With motivation he's lacked since his capture, Newt swings up, trying to topple Hermann. Thanks to the element of surprise, he manages to do so, sending them both careening to the floor. Hermann's cane rolls under the bed, but he's a little too busy keeping Newton from scratching at his face to care. 

“Wait, Newt! Stop! Don't...” Hermann grits his teeth and manages to shove him to the side. It’s an awkward clamber to swing himself over Newton, but he manages. “I've got this under control! Don't worry!” He's not speaking to Newton of course, but he knows Mako, Tendo, and likely anyone else in the building are gathered around the security screen, watching this right now. The last thing he needs is an entourage busting into the lab less than ten minutes since they first entered.

Newton hasn't been eating well lately, and being tied down to a chair for a week and a half has taken a toll on him physically. No matter _what_ Newt thought of himself, he never was a particularly athletic man, and now it’s even more obvious. 

Hermann on the other hand has been eating about as well as he ever has and has been getting plenty of exercise running all over the world searching for runaway biologists with aliens in their brains and looking for ways to stop a second apocalyptic event. 

In the end, the combination of Hermann's unrelenting grasp and admittedly unimpressive weight on Newton’s wrists manages to outlast the Precursor-induced struggles. 

Newt ends up just gasping for air until his legs start tapping and twitching again. 

“Well, that was certainly fun,” Hermann grumbles, reaching under the bed to find his cane. “I certainly can’t wait for a whole thrilling month of wrestling on the floor like children.”

“Heh,” laughs Newt, and that’s the most emotion they've gotten out of him since the withdrawals set in. 

Hermann gives him a look before getting back up to his feet. “Get back in bed, Dr. Geiszler.”

Newt doesn't respond, lying blankly on his back, still fidgeting. Always fidgeting. 

 _Compassion and human contact,_ says the therapist in Hermann's head, but he's tired and cranky and getting a little too old to grapple on the floor without pulling something. “Newt, I swear, if you don't get up onto that bed, I’ll leave you there for thirty-one days straight.”

To his complete and utter shock, Newt’s brow furrows. “Aren't you supposed to be _nice_ to me, Hermann?” But he gets up anyway. 

Hermann stares.

Newt doesn't get ready for bed, but Hermann doubts cavities will be the worst of his problems at the end of this. He still brushes his own teeth and climbs into the other bed. 

“Goodnight, Newt,” he hazards and receives a muffled grunt and the squeaking of the bed in response. 

* * *

When he wakes up, the first thing Hermann notices is the tray of food by the door. The second is that the Pons headpieces are lying next to it, their cords running outside to where the drifting sim is inevitably connected. 

“Newt,” he says. “Get up.”

Newt was hard to awaken on a normal day _before_ the Precursors, but now it’s three times the battle. He's damp with cold sweats, and his fists clench and unclench even while unconscious. 

Hermann's well-meaning shake gets a groan of pain in reply. “Newt,” he tries again. “You have to wake up.”

Jittery hands push up the long sleeves of Newt’s baggy sweatshirt, and he starts scratching wildly at his arms. Hermann tries to pry back Newt’s hands, but he just moans like _Hermann_ is the one hurting him somehow. 

It’s a half-hour battle to drag a barely cognizant Newt to the Pons, but Hermann manages through stubbornness alone. He knows _someone_ is watching this, and he can’t let them think he's incapable, damnit. 

He slaps the Pons onto Newt’s head, adjusts both the device and his glasses so they're less crooked, and dons his own gear. They sit there on the floor for a long minute until whoever is in charge of surveillance initiates the neural handshake. 

Hermann's only done this once before, so he's in no way prepared for the violent yank. It drags him inside out, like removing a tight rubber glove, and that’s not _his_ memory, oh god. Oh _god_. How will he survive this for a week and a half. No wonder cadets train for the drift for so long. 

He won’t chase the rabbit because his first instinct when uncomfortable is to _ignore_ everything. So he lets them slide right by. Those same childhood memories of lectures for students twice his age. Sobbing in the hallways after a stressful day. The snap of chalk when a ball of paper hits him in the back of the head. Chalk, white as bone. 

Bone, white as chalk. The snap of bone as he tumbles down the stairs to the university biology building. Grunting into his hand as the needle etches his skin. Those same adolescent memories of trying not to fly out of his own hyper-fixated mind. He lets them slide by. He won’t chase the rabbit because his damn brain is going too _fast,_ a mile-a-minute, super-powered, _lightspeed._  

The rabbit will have to chase him. 

He's racing, processing quicker than a supercomputer. He's running headlong into everything. _Think_ first. _Think._ He can’t. It’s not that he can’t think before he acts; it’s that it never occurs to him as something he should do. He runs on impulse and momentum. Nothing can slow him down now. But the faster you go, the harder you fall, and he can't anticipate that first twinge, when he does something odd he doesn't recognize as being in-character for himself. 

He kind of... hates everyone? Yes? For treating him as insignificant. Yes. He _knows_ they underestimate him, so now they all have to _die._ He has to _kill them._ Wipe them all out. 

No. 

What?

Yes, those are his thoughts. He's always felt like that. They see his wide eyes and wild hair and hear his mouth going, going, gone. So yes, he hates them for it but... Has he always felt it so deeply? I don't know man; this doesn't feel right. 

But it _is_ though. They have to _die._ They have to _pay._  

Hmm. Okay. You have a point but uh... maybe it’s a little much. Maybe I should talk to Hermann about this first...

 _No._ Not Hermann. What would _he_ know? He's the worst of them. He's underestimated you, I mean _me._ _Us._ Hermann has to die. They _all_ have to die. 

Okay... Okay, I'm on board, but who is _they?_

Anyone who isn't _us._  

Hermann rips out of the drift feeling like his brain is stuck several yards behind him. His vision is blurry and there’s definitely blood on his chin and... yep. He has to hurl. 

It’s an ungraceful flail to the adjacent lab bathroom, but he gags into the toilet and listens for any activity in the main room. 

There’s the distinctive groan of Newt stretching. Hermann's heard it a thousand times before when Newt would get ready to turn in for the night, long, long ago. 

“Whoo! What a rush, huh Hermann?”

Hermann is feeling a distinct rush too, but it turns out to be his nosebleed, not whatever Newt is talking about. 

Newt's head pops into the bathroom, and the grin stretching his face drops a little. “Shit, dude... You okay?” He steps in and Hermann tries not to shrink away from him. Newt notices anyway, and there’s definitely hurt in his eyes as he backs out again. “Sorry. Probably shouldn't, uh, crowd you, I know.” His lopsided smile gives Hermann more of a rush than the drift did. “I had that at first too. Don't worry. It gets better the more you do it.”

 _Cadets don't do this when they drift,_ thinks Hermann, but to be fair, pretty much anytime someone drifts with Newt they'll be drifting with the remains of the Precursors too. 

Just his luck. 

Hermann rolls his eyes and gets back up. He brushes his teeth, wipes his face, and walks back out to find Newt eating oatmeal out of a bowl with his hands. 

“Sorry,” Newt says with his mouth full. “There’s no utensils.”

Due to the whiplash of a seemingly recovered Newt, Hermann takes a while to understand that none were provided because they might be used as potential weapons. He’ll be having some choice words with whoever thought _oatmeal_ would make a good spoonless meal. Or at least he will in thirty days.

“Geez, it’s just so good to _see_ again,” Newt laughs. He reaches for an apple. “I mean, it makes sense because, you know, if I can't see past the keyboard, I can't reread the bullshit I was programming, but _wow._ Talk about stress headaches. And the _stumbling._ God. That was the worst.”

Hermann finishes his own bite of a protein bar, a typically unpalatable food made worse by the mint aftertaste in his mouth. “Really? I was under the impression you'd undergone Lasik.”

Newt gives him a look like Hermann’s completely braindead. It shouldn't be endearing and reassuring, but Hermann feels a warmth anyway. “You believed that? I mean, I don't actually have _that_ bad of vision already, but like, that was the story we made up for the public so no one would ask why I needed eye surgery.”

“You needed eye surgery?”

“Uh, yeah. Subconjunctival hemorrhage ended up as secondary glaucoma. Turns out double-drifting with a kaiju brain really puts pressure on your eye and fucks up your optic nerves.”

Hermann stares at him and tries not to make a face that relays his horror. 

He must have failed, because Newt stumbles on. “Yeah, and uh, we really didn't want to tell the world I'd gone and drifted with a couple kaiju, so when I had the operation, they officially said I was getting Lasik. Kinda funny now. They didn't want people to know, because they didn't want me to be... mistrusted or anything...”

Hermann feels violently uncomfortable and also makes a mental note to make an optometrist appointment after this is all over. 

“Anyway. Yep. Those ten years really passed in a blur. Get it? I mean, my sunglasses were prescription. It was kinda that when they were letting me be more _me,_ I was allowed to see. But when they were in charge, well. 20/20 vision was another thing they'd take away. And I _really_ wish you’d say something, dude, because I’m starting to feel weird, just rambling at you.”

Hermann set down his protein bar wrapper. “I’m sorry. I just don't know _what_ to say.”

“Alright,” Newt says with a shrug. He rolls up his sweatshirt sleeves so they don’t drop in his oatmeal, and Hermann stares at the tattoos. 

The older, smaller kaiju seem so simple in comparison. 

They eat in silence for a while longer until Newt growls and leaps to his feet. “Is there anything to _do_ in here? I know they aren’t gonna give me a scalpel and some kaiju guts, but come _on._ Gimme a crossword or something.”

“We have books,” Hermann says helpfully. He stacks the dishes on the tray and sets it back by the door. 

“Do you think they'd let us drift again?”

“Not until tonight.” Hermann isn't really looking forward to it himself. 

“Right. Right. Fuck.” Newt is a ball of energy again, and with no mental outlet, he resorts to punching and kicking the air, making odd sounds he probably considers intimidating. “Hermann, we need a punching bag. Ask for a punching bag.”

Hermann is gifted with the incredible ability to tune out whatever he wishes, a talent brought on by years of dedication and a terrible lab partner, so he turns the page of his book and ignores Newt trying to jump and touch the ceiling. 

At some point, the lab door raises a few inches. A gloved hand grabs their old dishes and a new tray slides in. 

“So _that’s_ how they do it,” Newt says as they eat lunch. 

“At least sandwiches are actually finger-food,” Hermann grumbles. 

As the day wears on, Newt's restlessness turns to frustration, and soon he's exhausted, laying down on the bed and twitching from withdrawals again. He doesn't respond to Hermann's comments, even when he tells him it’s time for their dinner and evening drift. 

The dimming of the lights and arrival of the meals are the only indications of the passage of time. 

With a heave, Hermann manages to haul Newt over to the Pons again. He takes a moment to prepare himself before he puts his side on. 

“Hey, relax,” Newt mumbles next to him. “Let it feel good. Don't fight it.”

“Spoken like a true drift junkie,” Hermann grumbles back, but then the world turns blue and he's gone again. 

Two being one isn't a concept that’s understandable until you _have_ drifted. You can read all the paperwork, all the firsthand accounts, but it’s not until you _try it_ that you really understand.

The human brain knows what it is. It has a sense of self, and it can't help but be aware that it is separate from all other brains. But a drift is a combination. Two become one in an incomprehensible shift where the brain only recognizes itself as an individual with contradicting memories. 

He remembers the biology and chemistry classes concurrently with the physics and mathematics. It’s not concerning to him that they can't both have possibly happened at the same time. 

The other students laugh at him in his huge, ugly, grandpa sweater-vests, and he can't believe he's never just said “fuck ‘em” and shown them it doesn't matter because he can _rock_ argyle like no one’s business. 

He keeps hyper-focusing on new fields of study, the interest in the old ones dying out until they're nearly repulsive, and why did he never just finish one doctorate and stick with it? He can feel the rock-steady feeling of contentment with what he does, and the calm of knowing that he's finally _completed_ something.

Jaeger drifts are based on equality. Parts of equal mass combined to make a whole that’s perfectly divisible by two. 

But this is different. It’s balance. It’s a base and an acid getting thrown together until neither are volatile and dangerous anymore. They're just... one calm, nonabrasive composite. 

They're a covalent bond. They're supplementary angles. 

Okay, but who is _they?_

They is _us._  

The drift falls away from Hermann, and this time he's more frightened than seeing the Precursors will ever make him. 

He throws up again, and his nose still bleeds, but something in him has fundamentally changed, and he can't quite figure out what it is.

Newt is almost loopy with his high, and Hermann doesn't need to force him to get ready for bed and fall asleep. 

Hermann walks into the bathroom again to change in the only place the cameras don't reach, and he mindlessly pulls off his shirt and just drops it onto the floor. 

It isn't until his pajamas are on that he sees it again and freezes. 

He stoops to pick it up, his knuckles white on his cane. 

Hermann folds the shirt and tries not to think about it. He tries not to think about his workspaces growing messy in those ten years. How his mind was no longer bothered by the disorder. 

 _Brains are trippy as shit, dude,_ he thinks in a voice that sounds like Newt. He nods to himself anyway. 

* * *

They drift twice a day for a week. 

Hermann gains a terrifying insight regarding Newt's possession. He learns how Newt was sequestered off, trapped in his own brain. He learns how Newt failed to fight back because it took him too long to notice there was something to fight at all. He learns the small, secret thoughts the Precursors took and twisted. He _feels_ Newt's faults become his weaknesses. 

That isn't what frightens him. 

What frightens him is Newt folding his glasses before he goes to sleep, straightening them so they lie parallel to the nightstand’s edge. 

Hermann is terrified by the way Newt folds his laundry in a neat stack by the door. 

He hates when he sees him wipe down the sink before he leaves the bathroom. 

Solitude was acceptable; Hermann expected that. The threat of bodily harm was also not too concerning, though they’ve only had a few issues. Knowing he had to make an effort to physically reassure Newt didn't really bother him. But irreversible destruction of Hermann's self? He hadn't really considered it. 

That was his biggest fear. 

Newt notices something is wrong after one of their morning drifts. He stares at Hermann, who is looking utterly forlorn at his oatmeal-covered hand that he has just been eating off of. “Hey, you okay?” Newt asks. 

Hermann glances up fast, like a trapped animal. “I’m fine,” he says, but he hears the lie just as much as Newt does. 

 _You have to get him to trust you, but more importantly, you have to trust him back,_ the therapist had said. 

Oatmeal drips off Hermann's hand into his bowl. “Actually, I... I have some concerns.”

Newt sits down on Hermann's bed. The restless energy is visible in his tapping fingers on his tattooed arms, only ever revealed in his post-drift highs.

“I’m worried that we’re facing permanent changes via ghost drift.”

Newt's eyebrows go up. “Really? I didn't notice.”

“How could you not notice?” Hermann hisses furiously. 

“I, uh. I can't always remember what I used to be like before... the Precursors. I just kinda go with the flow. Whatever I do, I do.”

Hermann shuts his eyes and flops back onto his pillows. His legs feel restless and sore, and he can't tell if it’s a byproduct of being locked in a room for a week without exercise or if it’s another Newt-habit he's catching. “I wish I had a way to remember how _I_ acted before all this.”

Newt laughs and slides up next to Hermann until they're sharing a pillow, and even if Newt _did_ finally shower last night, he doesn't want him there but it’s too much work to push him away. 

“So, like, a backup?” asks Newt. “Make a backup copy of your behavioral baseline so you can compare it to your current one?”

“Exactly,” Hermann sighs. “Except that never occurred to me as being something I needed to document and track.”

“Wish they'd let us keep a journal,” Newt says. “But if they won’t give me a spoon, they sure as hell won’t give me a pen. And I’m sure tablets are banned because they're hackable.”

Hermann doesn't reply. He's thinking about audio notes that blame him for Newt's potential kaiju-drift-related death. 

They lay there in silence. Newt's leg bounces up and down restlessly. Hermann can't tell if he wants him to stop or if he wants to bounce his leg too. It’s infuriating. 

“Thanks for doing this,” Newt blurts. “I know this can't be fun for you. Being cooped up in here. With just me for company.”

“Well, if we’re being honest, isn't this exactly how we lived our lives ten years ago? Just us, ‘cooped up’ in a lab together?”

“Huh. I suppose so.” Newt switches and bounces his other leg. “Marshal Pentecost used to stop in though. And Tendo.”

“And Mako— I mean, Secretary General Mori.”

“Dude. She's fine with you calling her Mako. Like, give her the respect she deserves, but you don't have to be so stuffy about it.”

“I’ll always lean toward calling her Ranger Mori first,” Hermann admits. 

Newt rolls onto his stomach and kicks his legs in the air. “Hermann. _Hermann._ She totally had to go through all this too. She did this with Raleigh, right?”

“Yes. She did.”

“She's amazing. Like, seriously, my hero.”

“I believe she's everyone’s hero, don't you think? And honestly Newt, she could be listening right now.”

Newt laughs, bright and joyous. He stands up and looks at the ceiling, spinning in circles. “Good! She deserves it. You’re my hero, Mako!” he yells to the sky.

“While you’re up,” Hermann says dryly, “why don't you thank Rangers Pentecost and Lambert and their cadets too.”

Newt does of course, jumping around the room and shouting at the top of his lungs. 

“Newt, for the love of god, would you sit down? You’re giving me motion-sickness,” Hermann snaps. 

He receives a stare in response. 

“I still think that shocks me a bit,” croaks Newt, a little hoarse. 

“What?”

“You call me Newt now. Not Dr. Geiszler. Not even _Newton,_ and honestly I remember celebrating the day I first got you to crack and say _that._ ”

“Well, you’ve been in my head now. I figure we’re as acquainted as we’re ever going to get. Might as well drop the formalities.”

Newt flops onto his own bed with a chuckle, and Hermann tries not to burn with disappointment at the distance. 

* * *

Another half week goes by, and Hermann has never been more excited to drift with Newt. He's excited because this is _it._ The last one. Then he can be free of additional ghost drifting consequences. He can go back to being himself. 

Newt is as boneless as ever, but Hermann no longer bothers trying to rouse him for drifts. He just hauls him to the door and drops the Pons on his head. 

The lights are dimmer, indicating the end of the day, and Hermann puts on his Pons and relaxes at the thought that he's almost free. 

It’s a bad idea. 

For his past drifts, he's been tense. Slightly guarded every time. He's never known what it’s like to give everything into the drift. 

Newt does everything at one hundred and fifty percent, and now, by mistake, Hermann does too. 

The melt is smooth and glossy. Blue drips over him like honey, and memories flash through his mind. 

He tips a beaker, but it rolls into the trash instead of shattering on the floor. Normally in the drift, he _sees_ memories. 

Today, he feels them. 

The beaker-threepoint-basket fills him with delight, and he screams to Hermann to see what he's done. Hermann doesn't seem to care, but that doesn't damper his excitement. 

He solves his equation and squares the answer, and the satisfaction of completing a project washes over him. It doesn't fade when Newt pretends he sees a dropped decimal early on in the problem. 

He flops onto Hermann's pillow and feels his heart squeeze when he isn't pushed away. 

He watches Newt walk back to his own bed and feels a squeeze of the opposite emotion. 

Part of himself hiccups over that. A little red flag flips up and an alarm blares in his mind. Half of him embraces it and the other begs him to ignore it, and he honestly can't tell which part of him thinks what. 

He pokes it. He can't let anything rest. Not when he's going at top speed with no signs of slowing. Not when he's meticulous and detail-oriented and can't let anything slip by. 

He pokes it and pulls it and finds something at the end, like yanking a glob of hair out of the shower drain, and honestly that’s disgusting. How is that even a good metaphor?

The end is a tangle, but he pushes it smooth. Curiosity killed the cat, but it got the scientist first. 

_You would do that for me?_

He amends it to _with_ me, but does that actually matter? It’s already slipped out and he knows what he means but he ignores it because there’s a _world_ to save right now. 

He doesn't know who he is because he's both of them at once, but this isn't a conflicting memory where he's pulling on a band t-shirt and a sweater-vest somehow simultaneously. 

But fuck if there just isn't any sight more beautiful than him standing there, bathed in blue light with a Pons on his head, ready to drift together. He might really sort of love him. 

And this time it doesn't matter which one he is, because they're both seeing and feeling the same thing. 

Hermann fades back in just as smoothly as he went out. 

His stomach is settled and his nose is clear. 

He can't look away from Newt and Newt can't look away from him. 

“Your nose is bleeding,” Hermann says, even though it’s not. 

“No, it’s not,” Newt says, touching it. 

“It is. Come wipe that off.”

Hermann pulls him into the bathroom where there are no cameras or microphones. 

Then he shoves Newt up against the closed door, drops his cane in favor of twisting his hands in Newt's sweater, and kisses him until they can't breathe. 

* * *

Things don't miraculously even out after that. 

They suffer through a solid week of Newt's drift withdrawals. 

Newt sweats and aches down into his joints, and Hermann curls him close and tries to maximize the amount of contact their bodies can make because science says this _works,_ goddamnit. 

There are several times where Newt's tremors slow and stop, and Hermann wrestles a stronger Newton to the floor and into the wall and once quite memorably through their lunch tray. 

Newton snarls and scratches and bites. He fights dirty and leaves Hermann sore and exhausted. 

When he's just Newt, he does nothing. 

He stares at things Hermann can't see, and he sleeps for hours on end, just _shaking._ He won’t wear his glasses, and his sleeves stay pulled down to his hands. 

It’s the start of their last week, and Hermann is really starting to worry when it finally happens. 

Their lunch tray slides in, and Newt blinks. 

“Is that food?” he whispers, and Hermann nods, wide-eyed. 

He helps Newt sit up and tips warm miso soup from the bowl straight to Newt's mouth. 

When they're done, Newt breathes, “Thanks,” and threads his hand into Hermann's. 

Hermann sits holding the bowl for an hour because he's unwilling to let go. 

By the middle of the week, Newt can hold conversations again. Hermann has to lead them, but they manage to chat the hours away all the same. 

Their last day is spent swaying slowly in the middle of the room in a facsimile of dancing. 

Hermann leans his weight into Newt, and Newt hides his face and tears in Hermann's shoulder, glasses creaking, but at least he's up and moving again. 

“Someday we can do this again, and I’ll even let you play AC/DC,” Hermann mutters. 

Newt hiccups a laugh on his shoulder. 

“I hardly even know who they are,” admits Hermann. 

“Dude. I know. I know, because you just implied we could _slow dance_ to AC/DC.”

In the end, PPDC sends Tendo. 

He walks in quietly and cautiously, but Newt just stumbles across the room with a small smile and wraps him in a hug. 

“Missed you, Newt,” Tendo says. 

Newt just squeezes tighter. 

* * *

Jake Pentecost has been raring for a fight since he was born. 

He's had his good times and his bad times, and he defines them by whether he was fighting _against_ people or fighting _with_ people. 

Nate is always there for him in that frustratingly sexy—but also just frustrating—way of his, and of course Amara and the other cadets—rangers now, he always forgets—refuse to leave his side. 

There’s real hope in the PPDC nowadays, and with Shao Industries’ support, the new jaegers are nearly completed. 

The task of finding a way through the breach to confront the Precursors falls to the newly dubbed A-Science division. It’s made up of the best Anteverse experts Mako could find, and with the two brilliant department heads, Jake thinks they’ll be ready sooner rather than later. 

He walks with Mako into the lab and immediately knows it’s one of _those_ days. 

The interns and assistants are all buried in their work, headphones or earplugs visible. 

It’s kind of strange calling the other two “Newt and Hermann,” but Jake honestly doesn't have the time to specify which Dr. Geiszler-Gottlieb he’s referring to and they're practically inseparable anyway. 

Hermann pokes into the kaiju sample in front of him, slicing with a scalpel and showing something to Newt that lights his face up. They pull off their aprons and gloves in tandem, dropping them onto the floor, and Jake watches them each climb a ladder on either side of the massive chalkboard. 

It takes him four tries to get their attention, and even Mako has a small smile on her face when they finally notice and come down. 

“You know, I almost liked it better when you two argued,” she jokes, eyes saying she doesn't mean it. 

“Oh, believe you me. We still argue,” Hermann snaps back. 

Newt snorts. “We argue because you won’t let me draw kaiju in the empty blackboard space.”

“That’s because despite what you seem to think, you are _not_ an artist and never will be.”

“Hey! I drew my tattoos!”

“No, you scrawled with crayons on the backsides of confidential PPDC reports and then were lucky enough to find a tattoo artist with enough skill to parse and transform it into something far less embarrassing.”

“Hey—“ Jake starts, but they're off again, Newt passing Hermann his cane as they pull their aprons back on.

Mako shakes her head and types something on her tablet before speaking to them one last time. “How soon until the artificial breach is ready?”

“Four days, thanks to my dissections here,” Hermann replies, muffled behind his safety mask. 

“What?” shrieks Newt. “It’s thanks to _my_ calculations. And we’ll be ready in three! The Geiszler-Gottlieb model shows—”

Hermann huffs. “Why you little— We agreed if _your_ surname comes first in our combined name, _my_ surname comes first on the breach model.”

“Okay, but _Gottlieb-Geiszler_ just doesn’t have the same ring—”

“At least you got your estimate,” Mako tells Jake smugly as they leave the lab at a jog. 

He shakes his head. “The Precursors can't be any more frightening than what’s going on in there.”

They pass by the hanger and stop to look through the window. “Looks like your jaeger’s finally finished.”

Mako smiles and turns off her tablet. “I’ll go tell Raleigh to suit up.”

**Author's Note:**

> me? projecting my adhd onto dr. newton geiszler? i would NEVER


End file.
